China’s corrupt ‘tigers’ tipped to be a rarer sight but plenty of ‘flies’ left to swat
After five years, Xi Jinping’s battle against corruption is showing no signs of slowing but it is running out of high-profile targets, observers suggest
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive is likely to focus less on “tigers” – or senior officials – during his second term in office but there will be no respite for rank-and-file cadres, or “flies”, experts said ahead of a plenary session of the country’s graft-busting agency in Beijing.
About 120 members of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection will hold the final plenum of their current term on Monday and Tuesday, before a new line-up is announced at the five-yearly Communist Party national congress, which opens on October 18.
The two-day session is expected to review the agency’s work report for the past five years, which will later be submitted to the party congress for endorsement.
Its members will have much to consider after the CCDI spearheaded an unprecedented anti-corruption campaign that has brought down more than 250 senior officials – including military generals and corporate executives – and seen about 1.4 million cadres disciplined, according to official figures.
Xi has repeatedly pledged that the clampdown on corruption and political disloyalty – launched soon after he took the party’s helm in late 2012 – will continue. In July, while outlining the broad agenda for his next term, Xi told the party’s ruling elite that the “comprehensive strengthening of party governance” would always be on the agenda, and that they should not be “complacent or blindly optimistic” about what the campaign had achieved in the past five years.